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Month: July 2015

The best way I have ever heard to capture my insecurity at being a generalist:

When someone says they want “designers who can code”, what I hear them saying is that they want a Swiss Army knife. The screwdriver, scissors, knife, toothpick and saw. The problem is that a Swiss Army knife doesn’t do anything particularly well. You aren’t going to see a carpenter driving screws with that little nub of a screwdriver, or a seamstress using those tiny scissors to cut fabric. The Swiss Army knife has tools that work on the most basic level, but they would never be considered replacements for the real thing. Worse still, because it tries to do so much, it’s not even that great at being a knife.

So, here’s a novel concept. All critiques of capitalism, salary jobs, overwork and productivity aside— if you have to do something, do the living hell out of it. I’ve done part-time landscaping for years for some extra cash, and it’s taught me the value of being fully in-the-moment while working. Zazen is not just a sitting practice. It relies on sublimating the lessons of sitting meditation into a technique for everyday living.

When you wash the dishes, you wash the hell out of them. When you sit at your desk archiving old emails, you archive the hell out of them. When you have to prepare for some sort of pitch or presentation, devote your full attention to it and become what you are doing. You get the idea.